Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
1:33 What is the premise of the Brandywine Festival?
3:56 Shoutout to Lee for inviting me to share her tent!
4:18 In-game camping
5:13 Photo disclaimer and tech rules
5:31 Preparation - My experience
6:26 First Day Hobbit Attire
7:04 Skip to for no outfit spoilers
7:25 GRWM - Picking an outfit for the video
8:33 Arrival Day
9:49 My Character - Who is Opal Hairtoe-Mead?
11:02 First Night
12:01 Workshops, vendors, mathoms and accessories
13:13 Lantern walk (Kale, Hazel and Fungus)
13:52 More trinkets and accessories
14:37 Back to the first night
15:40 In-game plot starts
18:51 Four Farthing Games
23:12 Opal’s love letter and fanart
26:24 Hobbit ears go on
27:06 Outfit is complete
28:25 Brandywine haul
31:17 Harpist interlude
31:53 Brandywine haul continues
33:33 Custom Cyrus Soonhome stamp interlude
34:08 Brandywine haul continues
37:13 Nellie Merriweather drawings interlude
37:38 Brandywine haul continues
40:33 Feedback!
57:49 Outro

Your whole experience was incredibly similar to the US festival last year—utterly magical with a wonderful community, but huge logistical issues (many of which were the same as those in year 1 of the US BW festival!). It's wild that they had issues with tents (ditto in the US last year—some people had to sleep in their cars night one), also blamed international shipping delays on supplies not being there, lack of clear communication, no way to communicate official game stuff or NPC's on site, even after having experience with these problems (and receiving feedback) already. Hopeful that next year runs more smoothly!

Thank you so much for this video! I was dying to finde some content about the UK Festival. Bought my 2027 ticket yesterday even though I had and have so many questions 😅 but you answered quite a lot of them. Thanks again ❤

It was lovely to meet you at the Brandywine.💕

That first night I stayed in my OoG camping and it was gorgeous to hear the laughter and strains of music tendrilling across the lake ❤ (Heledd Burrows 😘)

Hi Opal. It’s amazing that we were at the same festival and had totally different experiences, other than we both made a willow crown 😊. I caught quite a bit of Mossy’s plot, but I didn’t do the arrival hike or the lantern parade. I never heard a shout about what games were beginning or made it as far as the Bounders. I did enjoy some Goldbooty tea and Faivel’s Round Tankard discussions and I loved the Night Market. Our mathoms are entirely different too! Although I have an acorn painting by the same artist that did one of your owls. I went to the Post Office many times and posted letters there and chatted to the Post master. I never got to story time although I did see part of the puppet show. There’s so much happening all over the site… I think everyone has their own Festival and their own special memories xx

This was so well put together and detailed, thank you so much 🎉 can’t wait to see you next year ❤

Thanks for the video! I can't wait to see what you'll do for next year!

What a lovely time! I"m glad you were able to go. I can't go to the US one yet, but I'm beginning my wardrobe as if I were. And thinking of crafting some trinkets. I enjoyed your retelling.

Absolutely loved this video, took me right back to being there and how much fun we had, you made me laugh so much!

It was wonderful meeting you at the festival, i genuinley thought you were a larping pro, i'm gob smacked it was your first time and i whole heartidly agree with everything you mentioned.

Unfortunately it seems they are no longer planning on making a single day entry available - which is disappointing, as i do believe a lot the challenges are avoidable from an operational stand point.

I'm in WP every week (my friend lives on the grounds), so i know for a fact there are many other ways to avoid this but unfortunately it seems they made this decision before entertaining a listening group or reviewing the feedback from attendees.

I think you may know already, it was my friend who was sadly the person who was taken to hospital as you mentioned in the video, so although i do believe this needed to be taken very seriously, alongside the challenges with phone use etc, i completely disagree with their decision to remove saturday entry and how that might have changed any of the issues.

Safety is absolutely the most important thing here, without a doubt - but it just doesn't feel that this is the best business nor community decision, and it makes me very nervous on how they will be able to afford to put on anywhere near this years scale by cutting out a huge portion of the profits.

There were an awful lot of saturday guests - maybe 200ish, these people paid £70 for the day. That's a lot of money towards an event that made no alterations and had no additional costs for the influx of saturday guests vs the previous days - they did nothing different from an operational perspective and cost - so to now remove this profit, which i'm sure had contributed to the affordability in putting the entire event on, seems poorly informed - if my stats are close to reality.

We all know there were many issues with the bell tents, and things that were paid for not being provided leading to some going home before the end of the event - how will they be able to finance this next year, and realistically build on what was their first event - with such a huge portion of the profits being lost?

Saturday guests are also not suddenly attending for a whole week, it's just not possible, and there are those who will not return because of the tent issues. So i really hope they manage to figure this out, it was a fantastic event, whether i attend next year or not, i love that it exists and i hope it continues to improve.

There was a brief at 10am on arrival for the Saturday visitors however there was perhaps 20 or 30 people there at 10am and gathered and had the brief, which mentioned character, phones, where was in game where wasn't, the importance of blending in to everyone else's 3 day event, and being understanding that you were being allowed access to their experience, and stay away from peoples camps and belongings, generally it was a good brief and the 30 or so hobbits that were there for the brief just by the commitment to outfits you could tell were taking the whole thing quite seriously, the problem arises that I am sure they sold more than 30 Saturday tickets and it makes me wonder if later arrivals got the same brief. The Saturday ticket did state that there was no leaving time officially essentially midnight the end of Saturday itself

Loved this! I wish I could go! New sub Darling!

Hey, me and my grumpy other half loved meeting you. Although it was a brief meeting. I would definitely like a pre order please... 😬. Our feed back was a few less vigurus dances. And maybe a baker a green grosser and a cheese mongers. Sorry we are west farthering... Kind of had to be coming from the west country.